The September Theory

I fell in love with a boy who eventually became my first love.

Fell out of love as another boy broke up with me, leaving me to experience my first painfully sober heartbreak.

My grandfather, who I lived with for the first 15 years of my life, died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest. Silently, I began to celebrate the day he died as his birthday in Heaven.

It is a month where something always happens. And those somethings usually consist of happenings I'll most likely remember forever. Good or bad, nothing escapes September.

It is the annual, month-long era of: finding love... losing love...births...deaths...and now apparently I could add reincarnation to the list.

A few days ago, imagine my shock when a boy I'd loved (as only a twelve or thirteen year old can, ofcourse) popped up once more on the grid from out of nowhere.

I stared at the pending Friend Request on my Facebook inbox page, disbelieving.

Ivan Bacungan.

The name held its own myth, history, legend in my mind. If our parents generation had the Beatles to grow up with and be constants in their own adolescence, I had Ivan to bring me into mine.

He was the first boy who introduced me to romantic frustration, secretive glances, butterflies in the stomach, butterflies in the chest, butterflies everywhere, weak knees, the beauty of hearing a song publically dedicated to you playing over the school speakers, the confusing and unexpected ability to cry during love scenes in chick-flicks, tactics at inducing jealousy that would make Sun Tzu sob out loud...

Most importantly we are talking about Ivan Bacungan, the boy who made me first aware of the fact that I carried a poetic license.

God, I can only imagine how many notebooks I've kept hidden dusty and forgotten in my closet that are filled out with rambling and endless poetry about him.

After gradeschool graduation nearly nine years ago, he moved out of the Philippines into the U.S. and completely disappeared. No one has heard from him or about him since.

...Until now.

A flooding of mutual friends' messages came pouring in on his wall and mine and everyone's excited about his reappearance. In the initial excitement I felt like I was part of the LRT crowd at rush hour, trying to keep afloat, as I felt myself being squashed and carried by the current of the crowd rushing up to greet him.

Life is so definitely unexpected.
And it has an advocate in the month of September.

September never fails to stump me and make me realize that no one ever trumps it. That it's Life job to constantly keep changing the game plan. No time to step up to bat? Well, too bad because this curveball is headed straight for you. Awake yet?

So to September, I will close my exposure and love letter to you with the last update I'd typed into my twitter page:


"Being found by an Ivan Bacungan in US Marines uniform gives me the the heartiest laugh and the weirdest expression and the giddiest stomach."

Aug.12.09 Poem & Prayer

The thing is I never knew what hit me until it did. And I recognized it in an instant - in the mirror. A girl who was no longer a girl but a lady in fact. No, the girl may not have even been there in the first place. That's right. Perhaps in truth, there was never a girl. But an entirely different entity just as there is now, dwelling deep inside the dark pools staring back at me in the mirror: An Observer. Yes. An Observer. That was what this being was - behind the curtain of kitchen scents and familial warmth and blue burning love and barbeque laughter... And yet this Observer was present and not present. This Observer melts away, back and away into a puddle of stars swirling like frapuccino creme in the universal abyss whenever that spark, that flame of Passion Burns. Her writing, oh yes, her writing, her changing expressions so naked and stark on her face, her tongue sliding through a man's mouth and cutting into his intenstines trying to feel its way upwards into his soul. These men who were not men on the outside but men on the inside. These boys who were not boys on the outside but boys on the inside. Deep, deep down inside the mass riots of stagemanship protesting in the descending rings of their esophagus, or their hearts, or their penises. The Observer flies back home though. Every night. Right on time. Just as the clock strikes 13 on the Moon and She smiles. She has been waiting all day. And only when 13 o'clock comes does the ghosts of memories dance back down into the moonlit passages that curve and split, spirals into your waking reality, greeting you with fresh sighs. For it is not enough for memories to be ghosts themselves, but they need to have ghosts of themselves to remind even themselves that they exist. Not only in slanting moments but in the concrete haphazardness of All Encompassing Time. Right now though This Observer observes: a young girl wanting to find her home as well as reclaim it. Her family, her eyes tell me, have been scattered across the Universe and this girl has condemned herself to either

A) setting out into the vast world alone, not unfeeble but not unafraid either, to put up her white Chinese junk sails and carve out her own path, the trace of her scent mixing with the too often sour and eternally innocent scent of the wind until she finds a place which is totally isolated from all the lives she has lived and all the worlds to which she has travelled and drives a wooden stake that glitters like Gold into the earth and acknowledges that this land is her own, and what's more, that She Belongs to This Land.

Or

B) slitting her wrists so that she may draw the blood which she needs to drop into a sidewalk puddle which in turn sets its wide mouth agape for her to jump in and fall through until she finds herself swimming in the shallow waters of the Milky Way doing a backstroke and a breaststroke until she finally climbs out and uses the stars as stepping stones to reach Paradise where no doubt her entire Childhood, her Home, not lingering montages but all of her actual family waiting for her arrival - they, along with her, breathless to take part in the Grandest Reunion to ever take place. Because this girl, she knows that it is all Worth It.

The Observer notes everything down, even though she's clocked out for the evening...Like how this girl, she watches what happens outside the window of the car. How she sings songs in her head but feels them drowning out her heart. How she notes the exact moment hovering within a nanosecond when the realization that a person, a friend, maybe someone she may even share the same blood with, has two faces. Notes how this girl swallows her anger by the spoonfool. The expression on the girl's face when she knows that Time Flies so quickly...even when she's not having fun. The Observer notes how it has been aeons since this heart inside the soul inside the woman inside the girl has fallen truly in love. Notes how this girl who's become a woman has Saved herself, though this fact leaves her in constant repression and frustration, admiration and awe.

Notes most especially, her Prayers tonight:

Dear God. I believe in You. I need to confess (INSERT LIFE HERE). I need You and I cannot do this by myself. I am not worthy of all this Love but I am taking it. Just as I hope that You are taking Me, although You know my weaknesses and the times I am at fault. I have deceived myself and continue to do so: I tell myself that I am not angry. That I will let it pass because I know in the end it will not matter and only the love will. But how can the love survive the end if Truth does not guide it? Therefore I humbly ask Thee, Lord, to please give me Honesty. If not with the Rest of the World, then with myself. Do this Lord, and I will do the rest. I ask Thee, too, Lord, for Forgiveness. For giving into temptation and doubt which darkness has placed in the balcony of my bones. I only want to Praise You, even if sometimes I end up praising myself. I hope You, of All Beings and Energies, know that I have a good heart. That I want to make You happy. That I find a simple and elegant beauty in the lines that thread through the sequences and events of my life which you have so clearly designed. I know not, Lord God, the roads you have paved for me or the tragedies and illuminated kingdoms you plan for me to take in, but I pray that You will not leave me alone to cry, alone to laugh, alone to break and alone to fly. For I know that You love me, Lord. That You have died on the Holy Cross to open to me the door of my Salvation. Which is Eternal. Which is All Encompassing. Which is You. Good night and wake up with me tomorrow morning, won't you? As I am a 21 year old grown up still afraid of the silence of the dark, I ask Thee to please not turn off the moon tonight.

In the name of Jesus Christ...

Amen.

The Impossible Bridge

Stop singing to me.

I am afraid of putting my entity down in words. My time down in words. Because words are stolen. Time is stolen.

I am afraid of what will be stolen of myself.

Disappointed? About what?

Last week, while spending time with my girlfriends and enjoying a thoroughly enchanting conversation - in the middle of practically punctuating every sentence I made with his name, he appeared from out of nowhere.

I ended up having to spend almost the entire night one table away from where he and the girlfriend sat among friends, with her throwing herself all over him.

It was good that my chair forced me to face the other way.

It was just...different. You know?

Like...I was expecting something more.

More of him.

And I came to realize with a dawning look that he wasn't any less of himself.

He had just grown (or not grown, in a way) and has become a totally different person.

He probably told the girlfriend everything, which I don't really mind. I hadn't gone anywhere cheap with him anyway.

It was strange.

But it was the way I loved him.

It wasn't anything physical. I didn't dream of, you know, heated...exchanges, you could say... between us during midnights in any case. I don't know. In the nearly eight years spent being in love with him, I truthfully just never thought of wanting him that way. Ever.

Which is quite funny when one comes to think about it. I want a lot of other men that way most of the time.

It's just...

I wanted to share my soul.

And I wanted to look into his.

That night, it's like my world had tilted back into place. It had been revolving around the idea of him and the desire for him for a really long time. My world - perfect and infuriating and beautiful in every other aspect - had always been set askew by him.

As if Atlas indeed, had a hard time shrugging him off.

But that night... That night, I looked at him when he came up to greet us.

And I waited for that same sound of knocking at my door...and I waited.

By the end of the night, I'd just realized almost as if in a breath - the door was closed.

And it was now closed to him.

Finally.

Thank you.

To the gods, to the Universe, to mountains... thank you.

So This is Me.

There's this theory that everything happens at random. Life is random. Deaths are given at random. Animals procreate at random. Events in history occur at random. People choose their passions at random. People meet at random. Car accidents fall at random.

Somehow, I can never get behind that idea.

But when I think about all that love's brought to me...

What am I struggling for, if it is not meant to be?

I can't take a step. But I can't move on. I can't let him go completely. But I can't pull him in. I can't seem to be given a chance and I can't seem to make his chance known to him. Not in the theoretic or intangible but in the:

Come sit here a moment and I will tell you that I love you. Come down and meet my eyes so that you can see it for yourself.

The Salud to '09 (A story)

Some days it’s easy to forget what you tried to build.

‘What are you trying to build?’

‘I’m not sure anymore. I’ve stopped working on it for so long that I forget.’

‘It sounds like some Utopian dream.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Coffee?’

‘No, thanks.’

The park is filled with people sprawled on the grass. The field is endless and you can barely see the roads and smog from over the coconut trees lining the edges. The two people were standing on the hill that sloped down onto the field where Christmas lanterns still clung to the branches like the hands of children trying to grope the stars.

‘I forgot about you.’ He said.

‘That I’m more than an idea?’ She chuckled. ‘That I brought on the crazy?’

‘Yeah.’ He answered, sighing as he drank in the sights, laughing.

‘Well, there’s plenty more where that came from.’ She said.

‘Is there?’ He turned to glance at her.

A slight pause.

‘No.’ She finally answered. Then she sighed. ‘No. I think I’m just lonely tonight.’

‘Do you like telling the truth?’

‘Can’t remember the last time I’d done so.’

She seemed nonchalant when she answered so he bit his tongue. No use pressuring her. She’d

talk when she was ready. After all, their meeting tonight was her idea.

He was sitting on the edge of his bed and about to go downstairs to use the computer. He had just come home from spending the day with the rest of his friends, and he was a just a little bit tipsy. It was 2:10 AM and he was in the lull between kinetic and inertia. Just about the time of day he didn’t know the first thing to do with himself. Then she called.

They met here.

‘I didn’t know that this place existed. Well,’ He muttered. ‘I knew it was here. But I didn’t know that...there was all this.’ His arm swept in the field.

‘Yeah.’ She agreed. ‘I didn’t know about it either. My grandmother told me about it just last night. Apparently when my mom and my aunts and uncle were small my grandparents took them here on New Year’s Eve to spend the night. This place used to be filled with people who were setting off fireworks and they’d bring blankets and tents here and the children would just run around and they’d all watch the sky.’

‘I’m amazed that it’s still allowed.’

‘It’s not.’ She smiled.

He looked at her. But she just continued to smile. She shrugged and the December breeze brushed by the both of them, ruffling their hair, which were both unruly. They looked like a pair of kids just after a game of tag. Or a couple of pelicans ruffled by the spray of crashing waves.

He nearly grinned at the thought. He liked flight. He thought that she did too until, well, she seemed to have lost her nerve a while back and was now just getting back her footing. He honestly did not know what to feel about that. Or what to make of it, for that matter. Not that he really cared.

He said her name out loud. How to phrase this.... ‘Is this illegal?’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ She sighed.

‘What if we get caught?’

‘We won’t.’ She answered, and then finally turned to look up at him. The December night was cold so she stuffed her hands into her pockets. She smiled softly. ‘It’s my dream. Nothing bad will happen to you here.’

Suddenly the pieces fell together.

‘Thank you.’ He told her and smiled.

‘Welcome.’ She smiled then turned to gaze up at the sky.

He studied the midnight as well. ‘There are no stars tonight.’ He observed.

‘Oh, I’m sure they’re out there.’ She waved her hand, smiling up at the ocean of midnight hue. ‘You just need a little light to see them, that’s all.’

He waited, his pulse rising slowly but surely to his throat.

And then...

...she laughed...

FIREWORKS.

Fragmented light exploded across the sky. Everything is illuminated.

People clapped and applauded.

Children jumped, pointed at the sky, shouted.

Everyone was happy and neither of the two observers was aware of the wide smile on his or her face.

‘It’s so real!’ He said laughing, wanting to cover his ears from the noise.

‘It is,’ She breathed softly, agreeing with him. Still watching the lights.

‘Everything is so loud!’

‘No,’ She then turned to face him. ‘The noise you hear is coming from outside your window.’ She was smiling. ‘It must be the New Year already.’ She breathed out his name, her eyes bright.

‘What?’ He studied her eyes, her expression made him smile.

‘It’s time to wake up.’

- 12/31/2008